Computing, Fast and Slow
The Economist explores the challenges and possibilities for IBM, noting that “things began to change in 2013 when it [IBM] acquired SoftLayer, a cloud-computing provider” along with partnerships with other companies like Apple and Twitter.

IBM Brings Its Cloud to Mexico
IBM Cloud opened a new data center in Mexico, enabling customers to store location-sensitive data near Mexico while taking advantage of the data protection offered by redundancy options within SoftLayer’s global network.

Selling SoftLayer services to Internet-centric companies—hosting resellers, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers, big data and e-commerce companies—are no-brainers. These companies clearly see the advantages that come with having their servers (the backbone of their business) hosted by a specialist. They switch their capital expenses into variable costs that can be spread over time.

On the flip side are companies in non-Internet-centric industries—banking, health care, oil & gas, and aerospace. How do these companies find value in the IaaS offered by SoftLayer? The IT infrastructure (servers to be precise) accounts for less than 5 percent of their capital expenditure (CAPEX) as opposed to almost 95 percent for Internet-centric companies.

Will the same value proposition work for both Internet-centric and non-Internet-centric companies?

With Internet-centric companies (where servers constitute up to 95 percent of CAPEX), the majority of the workforce is server-savvy. This means there is a very high chance any contact we have with these companies will be with a server-savvy fellow. Selling SoftLayer will then be a question of how SoftLayer’s USPs differentiate from the competition.

The current industry trend is driving a faulty message: The cloud is a commodity.

The truth is: Unlike basic commodities (electricity, gas, or cable), where there is little or no differentiation between what the end user gets irrespective of the provider, cloud and hosting in general are different. This faulty commodity-based assumption drives the price wars in cloud computing.

Comparing apples and oranges cumulus and stratus.

To test and disprove this theory, I brought a customer’s systems engineer (a server expert) into a sales discussion with the CTO.

I requested to put the price negotiations on hold for about 4 hours, and evaluate the services first. To do this, I asked for the exact configuration that the customer had hosted with a competitor. I ordered the exact configuration on the SoftLayer platform and within 2 hours the servers were ready. When the customer’s system engineer tested the performance of the SoftLayer server and compared it to what they had from a competitor, the price comparison was thrown out the window for good.

There are many different facets wherein SoftLayer outperforms the competition but unfortunately, most prospective customers only see price.

For the non-Internet-centric companies, to reach the price discussion is a milestone in itself. Pricing negotiations only begin when the need and suitability (originality) have been established.

The IBM and SoftLayer effect.

As a salesperson, I subscribe to the SCOTSMAN Sales Qualification Matrix (Solution, Competition, Originality, Timescales, Size, Money, Authority, and Need). Most companies in this group need solutions. IaaS is just part of that solution. This is where IBM (Big Blue) comes into the picture. As a service giant in the IT Sector, IBM can and will build on SoftLayer’s IaaS prowess to conquer this landscape. The synergies that are coming from this acquisition will send shockwaves across the industry.

Question is: Will the stakeholders maximize this potential to the fullest?

I was born and raised in Brockville, Ontario, and I've always been a proud Canadian. In 2000, I decided to leave my homeland to pursue career options south of the 49th parallel, so I became an active participant in Canada's so-called "brain drain." It's never easy starting over, but I felt that my options were limited in Canada and that I wouldn't find many opportunities to make an impact on a global stage.

Fast-forward to 2012. Early in the year, we were introduced to GrowLab — a leading Vancouver based accelerator — by our friends at East Side Games Studio. They seemed to have a lot of incredible stuff going on, so I planned an exploratory mission of sorts ... In June, I'd visit a few Canadian cities with an open mind to see what, if anything, had changed. With the Catalyst Program's amazing success in the US, I hoped we could hunt down one or two Canadian startups and accelerators to help out.

I was very pleasantly surprised at what I found: A vibrant, thriving Canadian community of entrepreneurs that seemed to match or exceed the startup activity I've seen in Silicon Valley, Boulder, Boston, New York, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and Dubai. How times have changed! Investing in the Canadian startup scene was a no-brainer.

We'll enroll startups participating in those organizations into the Catalyst Program, and we'll provide infrastructure credits (for servers, storage and networking), executive mentoring, engineering resources and limited financial support. SoftLayer wants to become the de facto Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider for Canadian startups and startups worldwide, so this is a huge first step onto the international stage. More importantly — and on a personal level — I'm excited that we get to help new companies in Canada make a global impact with us.

As a Canadian expat, having the opportunity to give something back means a great deal to me. I see an incredible opportunity to nurture and help some of these Canadian startups take flight. SoftLayer is still an entrepreneurial company at heart, and we have a unique perspective on what it takes to build and scale the next killer app or game, so we feel especially suited to the task.

One of the Canadian entrepreneurs we've been working with sent us this great video produced by the Vancouver-based GROW Conference about entrepreneurship, and it immediately resonated with me, so I wanted to be sure to include it in this post:

We've already started working with dozens entrepreneurs in Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton and Waterloo who embody that video and have kindred spirits to my own. SoftLayer has a few Canadian ex-pats on our team, and as Catalyst moves into Canada officially, we're all extremely proud of our heritage and the opportunity we have to help.

Some have called our foray into the Canadian market an "international expansion" of sorts, I think of it more as a "coming home party."

When SoftLayer began back in 2005, the term “cloud computing” was rarely used if at all. The founders of SoftLayer had an ambitious vision and plan to build a service platform that could easily automate, scale and meet the demands of the most sophisticated IT users. They were obviously onto something. Since then, we’ve emerged as the world’s largest privately held Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider, helping the next generation of web savvy entrepreneurs realize their dreams. But we didn’t do it alone. We had partnerships in place—including working with Parallels.

Today everyone is trying to scramble and figure out how this “new” IT shift will work itself out. Our friends over at Parallels had a similar ambitious undertaking—trying to automate and enable a complete gamut of hosting and cloud services. This created a framework for our partnership. We worked with their engineering and sales teams, starting back in 2005, which resulted in Parallels Plesk Panel being offered as an option on every SoftLayer server. That was just the beginning. We are now deploying Parallels Automation for hosting partners and have plans to integrate with their Application Packaging Standard offering. Plans to integrate with other products like Parallels Cloud Server are also on the horizon. It all comes down to helping hosting companies and other joint customers thrive and succeed.

To find out more about our partnership and how it can help streamline your entry into cloud computing click here. We are also the only “Diamond” sponsor at the Parallels Summit 2012 APAC in Singapore this year. We share a heritage and understanding with Parallels borne from a need to simplify and solve IT problems on a broad scale. Now that’s what I call a likeminded partnership.

We are witnessing a fundamental shift in the IT industry. It is forever changing the way technology is delivered and consumed. The pay-as-you-go model for everything you need in IT is shattering the old computing paradigms, from software licensing models and hardware refresh cycles to budgeting operating costs. This change is bringing about more control and transparency to users while accelerating the commoditization of IT by making it easily available through a new model.

This new model comes in three major "flavors": Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. We incorporate and enable all three by offering a unified, fully automated platform to enable greater customer control over their IT environments. The key tenants of this emerging model for SoftLayer are innovation, empowerment, automation and integration. Here's how we deliver against these four key tenants.

Innovation: We want to lead the industry by offering best of breed and proprietary cloud, dedicated, and managed hosting solutions, based on our own intellectual property. Currently, we have more than 252,000 hours invested and 2.6 million lines of code developed around these solutions. Customers can take charge of every aspect of their IT operations (servers, storage, networking & services) through our fully automated platform. Our Customer Portal and fully featured APIs give customer more control by providing direct access to more than 100 back-end systems and activities — every aspect of IT operations can be managed.

Empowerment: We turn IT operations into a predictable fixed cost. Customers can stay focused on achieving their business goals, not managing IT infrastructure. We offer expert planning and support from a certified, 24/7 support staff. Customers can deploy and scale when they want with one-day and on-demand automated provisioning. They can keep it as long (or short) as needed, with monthly contracts. In addition, customers can choose what they want to manage and what they don't, with the ability to have hybrid IT self-managed and managed environments. This speaks to the flexibility of our platform!

Automation: This is an area that makes SoftLayer stand out from the pack. We automate deployment and management of all services, accelerating provisioning time, streamlining administrative tasks, and making it all on-demand, every day and night. With automation that mitigates the risk for human error, comprehensive security practices and options, and a 24/7 team of certified engineers, we provide greater stability, a 100% Uptime Guarantee, and around the clock support for any issues or service.

Integration: This is the final ingredient to making it ALL work. We seamlessly integrate hardware, software, and networking into a unified service, all conveniently controlled through our easy-to-use Customer Portal and robust APIs. We provide full information, full-time through our Customer Portal and APIs, for every service we provide; there is no data about a system that we keep from our customers, from usage statistics to network performance and beyond. We have complete transparency.

These four key tenets are what set us apart. When SoftLayer started back in 2005, the team's goal was not to be Go Daddy on steroids. We set our sights on being the de facto platform for mainstream businesses to run all their IT operations. This means the complete gamut of applications and workloads with no compromise of performance, security, reliability and access. We are entering into a new IT era, where "connected everything" is the norm. It reminds me of the old phrase "the network is the computer" from Sun Microsystems' slogan. We have the foundation in place, which will make for an unforgettable journey. Let us know what you think.

Standing Cloud's Application Layer for the SoftLayer Cloud

When we first came across the SoftLayer Cloud, we were impressed by the breadth of what it allowed the user to do through a web browser. Beyond the basic infrastructure capabilities of provisioning servers and storage (that you can find from other providers), the SoftLayer console and API allow full access to the networking, security, and server console capabilities of the system. It's as though you can take over the mind of a network administrator and have him or her do your bidding.

A host of networking features that come with the offering with the offering were especially exciting to us (see the end of this post for details). Now, when I say "us," I mean our Founding System Architect, Joel Wampler. Joel breathes network protocols, eats open source technology stacks for most of his meals and speaks in Linux command line. I, in contrast, wouldn't have the first idea how to make good use of those network features, but his amazement was enough to be contagious. I'm a software developer by trade, not a systems or network architect, and increasingly I'm mostly a business user ... And as I've transitioned to more of a business-centric focus, I've become the target demographic for Standing Cloud. The distinction between business users in a technical company and technical users in a business are why the Standing Cloud service is so powerful on the SoftLayer Cloud.

For business users and application developers, what we call the "dark cloud" (IaaS without an application layer) is not very useful and relatively intimidating. Business users primarily want SaaS - the ability to use applications without any consideration of the mechanics. Developers want APaaS or PaaS - the ability to customize existing applications or build them from scratch, without any (or much) consideration of the underlying technology stack or infrastructure.

Standing Cloud delivers all of this, the way it ought to be, on the SoftLayer Cloud. An end user can deploy a pre-packaged application in minutes with just a few clicks. We incorporate best practices so you take advantage of all the Standing Cloud and SoftLayer capabilities without having to know about them. As a developer, you can deploy one of these applications and then customize the code without having to think about system security configuration, memory parameters or other system administration issues. Just sync with your repository on Github or Subversion and the code will be uploaded and ready to run.

These "startup" benefits are just the beginning, though. Standing Cloud makes it easy to "move" your application - to a different server if you need more (or less) capacity, to a shared server if you are a solution provider and want to reduce the cost to your clients, or to a "test drive" if you want to experiment with an upgrade or code changes but don't want to affect the production deployment. We monitor the application and its status 24x7, and you receive notifications if it is down or performing slowly - and optionally, we can automatically revive it on a new server if the situation warrants.

If you want to open the hood, you can. Because of the way Standing Cloud deploys and manages applications, an adventurous end-user can easily access the application code and the PaaS layer. And a developer who has a special need can dive into the infrastructure layer through our browser based terminal window. Unlike most SaaS and PaaS systems, Standing Cloud keeps these details out of your hair but does not prevent you from accessing and changing them.

If you are just getting started with the SoftLayer Cloud, and you are not a system administrator, I highly recommend that you explore the Standing Cloud Application Network. Instead of being faced with the "dark cloud," you'll have more than 80 application choices (and we take requests if your favorites aren't included yet!). For developers, we offer language support for Java, Ruby, PHP, and Python.

If you are a system administrator and an existing SoftLayer customer, you may want to consider Standing Cloud as a time saver. There are so many powerful (and challenging!) capabilities to manage on SoftLayer for your complex, mission critical applications. Is deploying and locking down a server running Drupal or SugarCRM the best use of your time?

Finally, we would love to hear from you. Send an email to support@standingcloud.com, and tell us what you need, how you want to use the cloud, and what we could do better. Our users drive our product evolution, so please tell us what you think!

And for those of you who are curious about the network features I mentioned Joel salivating over at the start of the post, here are a few highlights:

Up to Gigabit speeds both internally and to the Internet

Private IP blocks are assigned as a VLAN so that other customers cannot access them

IPv6 capable

Free inbound bandwidth, and 1000GB of outbound bandwidth included

Ability to share an IP address across multiple machines (excellent for high availability solutions)

This guest blog series highlights companies in SoftLayer's Technology Partners Marketplace. These Partners have built their businesses on the SoftLayer Platform, and we're excited for them to tell their stories. New Partners will be added to the Marketplace each month, so stay tuned for many more come.

The week of May 10, I’ll be heading off to San Francisco with a full complement of SoftLayer personnel to attend and present at Synergy (www.citrixsynergy.com), Citrix’s annual conference. We are heading out in force to deliver our message on the advantages of utilizing Infrastructure as a Service.

If you are familiar with SoftLayer, then you know our value proposition: we can provide network and compute infrastructure to our customers faster, better, and with a less financial burden than doing it on your own. I’ll be making a presentation on Wednesday May 12th highlighting the advantages of IaaS and examples of business getting more done more quickly for less by using a service provider like SoftLayer.

In addition, on Thursday the 13th, I’ll be discussing the managed vs. automated self-managed models of IaaS with Jon Greaves of Carpathia (http://www.carpathiahosting.com/blogs/carpathia-blog). It ought to be an interesting discussion that helps customers decide which model is right for them.

SoftLayer is a Gold Sponsor at the event and we will have some other management on site as well as members of the sales team discussing our service at our booth in the Solutions Expo.

I didn’t make up the phrase “Adjacent Synergies” but I think it counts as a double in buzzword bingo. I would have used “Synergistic Adjacencies” instead.

So far in 2009, there’s been a fair amount of discussion pro and con regarding the financial benefits (or lack thereof) of cloud computing. It’s very reminiscent of the whole “do-it-yourself” or “outsource it” debate. Blog posts like this and articles like this are samples of the recent debate.

One thing I have not yet seen or heard discussed regarding cloud computing is the concept of EVA, or Economic Value Added. Let me add at this point that EVA is a registered service mark of EVA Dimensions LLC and of Stern Stewart & Co. It is the concept of economic income instead of accounting income. SoftLayer subscribes to software from EVA Dimensions LLC. Get more info here.

For you to buy into the premise of this post, you’ll have to be sold on EVA as a valuable metric. Bottom line, EVA cleans up the distortions of GAAP and aligns all areas of the business so that more EVA is always better than less EVA. Most other metrics when pushed to extremes can actually harm a business, but not EVA. Yes, even bottom line GAAP net income when pushed to an extreme can harm a business. (How that can happen is fodder for another blog post.) Several books have been written about EVA and its benefits, so that’s too much to write about in this post. This is a good summary link, and for more info you can Google it on your own. And if you do Google it on your own, be warned that you may have to wade through links regarding Eva Longoria and/or Eva Mendes .